What kind of newt / habitat suggestions!

Hey all,

A long time ago I got 5 newts from the pet store... they were sold as "oregon newts". Most died after a few years but I still have one that is getting close to 15 years old. He is in a 30 g cube tank with a filter, a ornament that he can climb onto to get out of the water, and a few live plants. He gets fed bloodworms twice a week.

Wondering if it truely is an Oregon Newt, and if so what is their life expectancy?

Is there anything I should do to improve his habitat?

Yes, it´s a Taricha granulosa.
You should get rid of the gravel, it can be ingested accidentally, causing trouble, plus it traps lots of debris.
If you want a substrate, very fine silica sand is best, but you can also go bare bottom which makes feeding and cleaning very easy.
The diet is terribly incomplete, i´m surprise its lasted for so long on a diet of bloodworms with no ill effects. I expect your water must be really hard.
Try offering earthworms, those are nutritionally complete and are an excellent staple. For variety you can offer the bloodworms, waxworms, blackworms, fres-water crustaceans, isopods, small crickets, small slugs, specially formulated pellets...

I would also recommend adding lots more live plants and increasing the water volume. The tank dimensions are not ideal, but you should still take advantage of as much volume as possible since the more water, the more chemically and thermally stable it is.

You can keep t. grans terrestrial if you want to. That's a male by the way. I haven't ever heard them called Oregon newt, but its a T. Grans none the less, usually called rough skinned newt. Their native to WA, OR, CAL and BC. Earthworms work great with this species. I dont know what their life expectancy in captivity but my guess is hes getting pretty old. Also i would put a float in there for him to get out on. -Seth